Daily Archives: October 3, 2021

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Have you ever heard of Columbine? my 21-year-old daughter asked my husband and me over stir fry last week. She had watched a documentary about the incident on YouTube, and like the time she asked if I had ever heard the Modern English song I Melt With You, she had no concept of our lives before her birth. Of course we had heard of the infamous school shooting, we told her, and we knew about Dylan and Erics tragic plan to reenact the first-person shooter video game Doom.

Back then, I thought we could prevent our children from being negatively affected by new digital technologies by laying down clear rules and communicating frequently. Surely our society, government and private companies would study the Columbine shootings to prevent similar tragedies from happening in the future. I felt comforted that ratings systems, consumer protections and regulations would be put in place to keep our children safe.

Or so I thought.

What I didnt know was that there were emerging technologies that would negatively influence our children more than video games ever could.

Friendster led to LinkedIn and MySpace in 2003. Facebook started on Harvard Universitys campus in 2004 and became the largest social networking site in the world by 2009. Instagram launched in 2010, and was gobbled by Facebook in 2012. WhatsApp was launched in 2009, and snatched by Facebook in 2014. Today, Facebook is a trillion-dollar conglomerate. Thirty-seven-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks cofounder, CEO and controlling shareholder, has a net worth of nearly $124 billion.

One would think that Zuckerberg, one of the wealthiest people in the world, would aim to use his fortune to make the world a better place for his two young daughters. But according to a series of recent Wall Street Journal articles, Zuckerbergs company has disregarded its own internal studies showing Instagram use makes body image issues worse for one in three teenage girls, and more than 40% of teenage users in the U.S. and U.K. began feeling unattractive" while using Instagram. These findings were posted on an internal Facebook message board in March 2020, but rather than changing its policies to protect Instagram users, Facebook plowed ahead with plans to release a new platform targeting children, ignoring proof that its product is toxic to teenage girls, causing more anxiety, depression and eating disorders.

Zuckerberg watched a slide presentation on the findings, but at congressional hearings a couple months later, he said that Facebook researched the effects social media has on children, and found that "Social apps ... have positive mental-health benefits. Fortunately, an unidentified whistleblower has leaked damning internal documents to Congress, who is holding hearings on the matter.

As a parent who was fearful of the impact of video games on my kids post-Columbine, I am downright terrified of what social media has done to them. Having grown up in the 70s and 80s blissfully unaware of the technology that would envelop my children one day, I was at a disadvantage as a parent. My learning curve in understanding technology was slower than its growth. In other words, I didnt learn fast enough to warn my kids before they were exposed to harm. We gave our three kids smartphones when they were in high school, ironically believing that it would help us keep them physically safe. We didnt understand the dangers social media posed. Congress, with a median age over 58, is also at a disadvantage, trying to regulate technology that is difficult for our generation to comprehend.

However, it doesnt take a computer scientist to face these five obvious facts:

U.S. teens spend more than half of their waking hours on screen media every day, not including screen time necessary for school and homework. Research has proven that social media has become a significant negative influence on the mental development of our children. Parents prohibiting or restricting social media use may be ineffective since the technology is widely accessible on a variety of devices. Greedy tech giants dont care about our children, much less their own.

And its time for Congress to take action to stop them.

Continue reading here:

Calling out the tech giants that endanger our children - Stars and Stripes

Hebron, Ky., is a peculiar spot as ground zero for the technology sectors latest push in Americas heartland, but Amazon Air, the e-commerce giants 5-year-old cargo airline, is operating a 800,000-square-foot sorting center here.

The$1.5 billion air hub,occupying 600 acres along the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airports (CVG) southern boundary, will eventually handle enough goods to fill 75 to 100 flights a day within a few years, Brian Cobb, chief innovation officer at CVG, says. Amazon said it doesnt discuss future plans, only that the facility will create more than 2,000 jobs and operate 12 daily flights by the end of this year.

This hub is going to let us to get packages to customers faster, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said during the groundbreaking ceremony at CVG in May 2019. Thats a big deal.

The airport is one of the best startup labs in the country, Pete Blackshaw, chief executive of Cintrifuse, a startup and entrepreneur organization, told MarketWatch. It is redefining [Cincinnati] as a great supply way.

In addition to a sweetheart tax deal with local officials, Amazon was drawn to Hebron because of available land and a fast-modernizing airport. CVG deploys autonomous vehicles to move luggage; the fleet is managed via a 5G network. Sensors manage bathroom cleanliness and a tram system that shuttles passengers between terminals and baggage claim. We are trying to build a micro-smart city here, Cobb said.

Some 100 miles northeast, in New Albany, Ohio, data centers have sprouted smack dab in the middle of the state for Amazon, Facebook Inc. FB, +1.07%, and Google parent Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, +2.14% GOOG, +2.40%. The area is a core hub for the physical infrastructure of the internet that billions of people rely on.

Google, which operates a $600 million data center in New Albany, said it plans to invest another $1 billion in the area. The company will also buy more than 600 acres in Columbus and Lancaster as potential future data center sites. Google benefited from $54 million in tax breaks from the Columbus City Council to build the data center, which will bring 20 jobs.

The growing appeal of small town, USA, particularly in Ohio, for tech giants comes down to a mantra in real estate: Location, location, location. About 60% of North Americas population is within 500 miles of Cincinnati; CSX Corp. CSX, +2.02% operates one of the largest rail yards in the U.S. in the Queen City; and the EPA second-largest research facility is in Cincinnati.

Cincinnati is close to everything. It is a physical distribution hub by air, highway, river, and rail, says Mike Venerable, chief executive of CincyTech, which has a portfolio of more than 30 startups across the digital, healthcare, and food industries.

Equally important, a business-friendly climate is luring Big Tech with regulation-free legislation and tax incentives. The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority in early 2017 awarded $40 million in tax incentives for Amazons CVG project contingent on Amazon creating at least 600 new jobs in Boone County. Plenty of space became available for Amazon after Delta Air Lines Inc. DAL, +6.50% dropped CVG as a hub for Detroit.

Ohio is working hard to be very business friendly with bills that minimize regulation, John Navin, an economics professor at Ohio Northern University, told MarketWatch. The Republican-dominated state legislature, for example, has pushed bills that give businesses wide latitude with COVID/vaccination/mask rules to make it easier to run and operate.

To be sure, the tech scene in Ohio while growing is about the size of a large Silicon Valley employer. Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus have approximately 125,000 high-tech workers, compared to the 373,000 in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to employment research by region. Indeed, in its Tech Talent Scorecard Ranking of the top 50 U.S. markets, CBRE places Columbus at No. 31, Cincinnati at No. 42, and Cleveland at No. 44. By comparison, Salt Lake City is No. 18 and Milwaukee is No. 49.

Migration patterns based on frequently updated U.S. Postal Service data do show an exodus from dense, high-cost urban metro areas such as the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, and Seattle in 2020, but the outflow was modest in most cases, according to a CBRE analysis in April.

Cincinnati has leveraged its location and business-friendly environment to compete with other regions such as Indianapolis, Nashville, and Austin, Texas.

We are about a decade behind [Pittsburgh] in tech, but we have a more diverse economy, says Venerable, pointing to the corporate headquarters of Procter & Gamble Co. PG, -0.16% and Kroger Co. KR, -3.19% in Cincinnati, as well as the prevalence of insurance companies, banks, supply chain companies, manufacturing facilities, health care firms, and digital media startups.

Major companies are at a tipping point of redefining themselves through technology, says Blackshaw. There is a symbiotic need between their needs and our startup stable that could change everything.

Two local examples underscore the marriage of Fortune 500 companies and startups: Medical wearable device maker Enable Injections Inc., which has developed a yo-yo-sized gadget to ease the injection of drugs through a tiny needle, and 80 Acres Farms, an environmentally-friendly producer of lettuce that is grown and harvested indoors with no soil, minimal water, and under pink-purple lamps.

Enables enFuse device, which can be affixed to the patients body and dispenses medication while the subject goes about their tasks, could be a breakthrough in a potential $1.2 trillion market by 2030. It plans to ramp up production of the device into the millions in a few years. Among its commercial partners are Genentech, a subsidiary of Roche Holding ROG, +0.97%, and Eli Lilly & Co. LLY, -0.63%. Enable has partnered with Flex to mass-manufacture its product.

High-tech plant factory 80 Acres Farms, whose goods are sold through Amazons Whole Foods Market Inc. and Kroger, is not just changing the way plants are grown but also streamlining the convoluted system of food production, pricing, and distribution in the U.S., according to Mike Zelkind, a former food company executive who is 80 Acres Farms CEO. Most important, it has eliminated so-called food miles in transporting produce by truck and rail across the country.

Whats happening in Cincinnati is occurring in other cities of the heartland, an upshot of being near major intersections for transportation hubs and internet infrastructure; a realization by older, more established companies based in the Midwest that they must partner with high-tech startups to innovate; and a consequence of the pandemic and its profound impact on work locations.

Untethered by the need to work out of an office, pandemic-era employees have been liberated to work from anywhere, creating distributed workforces.

You can now work for the best job, and live for the best life, says Phil Libin, CEO of All Turtles, an artificial intelligence startup studio. In December, he decamped San Francisco for Bentonville, Ark.

I just wanted to get out of San Francisco. It had become pretty unpleasant: Forest fires, crime, the whole vibe, says Libin, the founder of app maker Evernote Corp. Once I could work from anywhere, the risk-reward just wasnt worth it.

Libin didnt intend to stay long in Arkansas. The plan was to stay a few months, then go to Boulder, Salt Lake City, and Japan. But he is sticking in the town where Walmart Inc. WMT, -1.67% is headquartered because of the quality of life and affordability.

This is the kind of thing possible and accessible now for a few million people, in companies that are fully distributed, he said. Our employees are all over the place. Two-thirds of All Turtles employees have moved from San Francisco the past few years.

There is a special moniker for Ohioans who come back to the Buckeye state after work stints elsewhere. We call them Boomerang Buckeyes, Chris Berry, president ofOhioX,a nonprofit dedicated to helping make Ohio a leading tech hub, told MarketWatch.

Chris Bergman has had a front row seat. He grew up in Cincinnati, spent some time on the East Coast, and returned to his hometown to start Gylee Games in 2019. The videogame development studios Ra Ra Boom! is due as early as next year. There is a maturity of funds. We are seeing a generation of entrepreneurs here, and most of them are staying, says Bergman, who like others emphasizes the spirit of collaboration over competition in the Midwest.

VC Venerable, raised in Hamilton, Ohio, worked for 15 years in the Washington, D.C., area before returning to his home state in 2004 to raise a young family.

A risk standard is developing in the Midwest, said Venerable, whose portfolio of investments include deep-thinking companies that address big issues such as health care and climate-friendly food production. We believe in edge thinkers.

Here is the original post:

Location, location, location: Ohio is benefiting in tech growth as a major transportation hub - MarketWatch

According to a report from watchdog group Accountable.US, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Disney, and a number of other big-name corporations are actively backing business groups that are lobbying against a monumental climate bill in the U.S. reports The Guardian.

Numerous corporate lobby groups have taken up arms against President Joe Bidens $3.5 trillion USD budget bill that aims to turn the U.S. electricity system carbon neutral, fund the establishment of carbon-free nuclear energy facilities, and accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.

Whats alarming, however, is the fact that the groups and organizations lobbying to kill this bill, which is already facing mounting opposition from Republicans, are funded and backed by big household names that have, in one way or another, vowed to combat the climate crisis. The bill, if passed, would exact higher taxes on the rich.

Apple has been outspoken on the climate emergency and has taken a number of measures to decrease its own carbon footprint. In 2013, Apple transitioned all of its data centres to 100% renewable energy, and in 2019 received a Global Climate Action Award from the United Nations for its efforts in combating climate change.

Jeff Bezos, former CEO of Amazon and the wealthiest man in the world, pledged $10 billion USD of his personal wealth last year to fight climate change. The eCommerce giant also became the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in the U.S. earlier this year.

The Business Roundtable, a group comprised of company chief executives including Apples Tim Cook, Amazons Andy Jassy, Alphabets Sundar Pichai, and Exxons Darren Woods, has said it is deeply concerned about the bill, largely because it intends to raise taxes on the wealthy.

Apple seems to be developing a habit of going against the very virtues it champions earlier in the year, the iPhone maker announced plans for a new Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) detection system that would scan users photos, messages, and iCloud data, giving rise to concerns over user privacy.

The US Chamber of Commerce, the lobby group at the vanguard of this assault, includes executives from Microsoft, Intuit, United Airlines, and Deloitte and has promised to do everything we can to prevent this tax-raising, job-killing reconciliation bill from becoming law.

Other lobby groups comprised of companies like Disney, FedEx, Verizon, Bayer, and AstraZeneca are executing advertisement blitzes against the legislation.

Major corporations love to tell us how committed they are to addressing the climate crisis and building a sustainable future, but behind closed doors, they are funding the very industry trade groups that are fighting tooth and nail to stop the biggest climate change bill ever, said Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US.

Hiding behind these shady groups doesnt just put our environment at risk it puts these companies household names and reputations in serious jeopardy, he added.

Read more from the original source:

Apple, Amazon and Other Tech Giants Opposing U.S. Climate Bill: Report - iPhone in Canada

Photo Illustration by Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Senators from both parties levied criticism against Facebook at a consumer protection subcommittee hearing Thursday, questioning the companys global head of safety, Antigone Davis, about Instagrams effects on teenagers. Instagram is owned by Facebook.

The new scrutiny comes after months of bipartisan legislative talks to limit Big Tech and after Facebook spent $9.5 million on federal lobbying in the first half of 2021, the second most of all Big Tech companies. In 2020, Facebook spent more on lobbying than any Big Tech company, totaling $19.6 million. That year, Facebook ranked sixth in lobbying expenditures among all registered lobbying clients.

The hearing was set in motion after The Wall Street Journal published internal Facebook documents showing the social media giants research had identified harmful mental health effects of Instagram on teenagers.

Facebook announced Monday it would pause its work on creating a kids version of the photo sharing app, in light of the document leak. The company has largely skirted blame for the issue, arguing that it had made changes to limit harm and that many teen users reported a positive experience with the app.

The internal documents said that Instagram made body image issues worse for one in three teen girls. Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced those thoughts to Instagram, according to Facebooks research documents.

Consumer protection, product safety and data security subcommittee chair Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the subcommittee, said in a Thursday statement they would reintroduce the Kids Internet Design and Safety (KIDS) Act, which would ban certain features such as follower and like counts on social media platforms for users under 16.

Online platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have repeatedly prioritized profits over childrens safety, Blumenthal said in the statement. By cracking down on harmful content and manipulative marketing, this legislation will stop proliferating the bad practices of these tech giants.

Facebook reported lobbying on at least 36 bills this year, including the Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency Act introduced by two members of the subcommittee, Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and John Thune (R-S.D.).

Unlike some other Big Tech companies, Facebook has consistently increased its lobbying expenditures since 2016 when it spent $8.6 million. Google parent company Alphabet spent almost 31% less on lobbying between 2019 and 2020. Apple and Microsoft had also cut their lobbying expenditures in that time period. Apple spent $3.1 million in 2021 and Microsoft spent $5.1 million so far this year.

OpenSecrets reported in June that a network of conservative dark money organizations had been working with tech giants including Facebook to combat anti-trust legislation. Facebook disclosed collaborating with the National Taxpayers Union and gave the American Conservative Union at least $62,500 as a CPAC sponsor in 2017.

Facebooks PAC has given money to every senator on the subcommittee except Markey, totaling a combined $190,000 over all their careers, Forbes reported.

Facebook has given the most to Schatz, who has received $35,000, and Thune, who received $31,500 to his primary campaign account and his leadership PAC. Schatzs most recent contribution from the PAC, at $2,500, came on June 30.

The tech giants PAC reported spending $566,895 in the 2020 election cycle and $721,756 in the 2018 election cycle. Republicans received slightly more contributions from the PAC in both elections. Facebook has received increased scrutiny from Congress since 2016 after the company was criticized for the spread of disinformation on its platform.

During Thursdays hearing, Davis wouldnt commit to Facebook supporting the KIDS Act. Rather, he said the company would follow up at a later time.

Your company has had this legislation in your possession for months. And youre testifying here today before the committee that would have to pass this legislation, Markey said at the hearing. I just feel that delay and obfuscation is the legislative strategy of Facebook.

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Facebook maintained big lobbying expenses ahead of Senate hearing on teen social media use - Center for Responsive Politics

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About the author: Patrick Jenevein is CEO of Pointe Bello LLC, an advisory firm.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China, is currently kneecapping his countrys most successful private companies.

Until very recently, the CPC permitted the growth of domestic tech giants, including Alibaba , a Chinese analog of Amazon ; Tencent , a massive tech conglomerate; Xiaomi, an artificial intelligence company tied to the military but better known for its smartphones; Huawei, a controversial global leader in 5G networks; and Baidu, one of the worlds largest AI companies. Leaders watched these firms create massive numbers of jobs and improve consumers lives, and challenge their American and European competitors.

But now, the CPC fears them. In late 2020, Beijings regulators abruptly scuttled the initial public offering of Ant, an internet payments company that spun out of Alibaba. The stock offering was poised to be the largest IPO in history, giving China the sort of bragging rights you would have expected party bosses to relish.

This wasnt a one-off. In spring 2021, Chinese regulators issued a $2.8 billion antitrust fine to Alibaba. And regulators have cracked down on the ability of Chinese firms to list their shares in the United Statesonce a rite of passage for Chinese companies that signaled international legitimacy.

That very legitimacy has become a problem for the CPC, which is cracking down on Chinas Big Tech precisely because they present an alternative governance structure in Chinese societyone that knows the people of China better than the CCP itself. The Communist Party of China has always insisted on a paramount rulethe partys own absolute hegemonyand these Big Tech companies threaten that.

For years, China-watchers in the West clung to the conviction that the CPC needed strong economic growth from the private sector to survive in power. Growth meant increasing prosperity, and prosperity bought domestic peace: It implied proof that the Party provided for the people. Now, the Party fears that that legitimacy will rest with its true sourcethe technology companies that have become billboards for Chinese pride and the governance structures that made them so.

Former Alibaba CEO Jack Ma pointed out this discrepancy in his own resignation letter. Effectively ousted from the tech powerhouse he helped create, Ma lamented, Simply relying on individuals or blindly following a system will not solve our problems, and highlighted the benefits of the governance structure he created at Alibaba, saying, I have full confidence that our partnership system and efforts to safeguard our culture will in time win over the love and support from customers, employees and shareholders.

Its exactly that collaborative attitude that prompted the recent about-facefrom the CPC. As Chinas economy has grown, the Chinese people increasingly see businessmen like Ma as the heroes of Chinese prosperity and that has clearly become a headache for the CPC. Speaking of the measures the party has taken against Ma and his business empireincluding blocking the Ant IPOone apparatchik likened them to putting a bridle on a horse.

Its a telling metaphor. The Chinese economy has grown tenfold this century, according to World Bank figures, from $1.3 trillion in GDP to more than $14 trillion today. For much of that time, the Communist Party was content to ride the galloping horse of private economic growthgreased of course by a fair share of corruption and redistribution back to party bosses. Today, Xi clearly worries more about the growing social and political clout of this new class of tech billionaires than about slowing growth or irking domestic investors, whove been hit hard by the selloff in Chinese tech shares.

Whys that? Because these billionaires and their companies know the Chinese people better than the CPC and they genuinely valueand respond totheir individual needs and wants. This service and reliability is completely antithetical to the communist ideology.

Having watched what the regime was capable of in Tiananmen Square in 1989 or Hong Kong in the past year, it would seem foolhardy to bet against Beijing in this power struggle. On one hand, Xi and his party would not have picked this fight with Chinas titans of industry unless they felt it was necessaryand survivable.

But on the other hand, the recent crackdown provides evidence not of the Partys strength, but of its weakness. Its efforts to bridle Chinas tech stallions may be just the outcropping of a tectonic power struggle. And that raises some important questions: Has Chinas Big Tech already stolen the hearts and minds of Chinese people away from the Party? And how far is the Party willing to go to reassert its dominance, whether over domestic companies or in the South China Sea and Taiwan?

Guest commentaries like this one are written by authors outside the Barrons and MarketWatch newsroom. They reflect the perspective and opinions of the authors. Submit commentary proposals and other feedback toideas@barrons.com.

See original here:

China's Regulatory Stifling of Its Tech Giants Shows Xi and the CCP Are Worried - Barron's

Anti-monopoly enforcement is in vogue once again around the world. After two decades of virtually unchecked growth from the worlds biggest tech companiesparticularly, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Appleregulators and politicians are rediscovering their zeal for reining in corporate power.

In the last four years, the EUhas issued a series of multi-billion-dollar rulings against big tech companies, and the blocs crusading competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager has announced new investigations at a steady clip. Antitrust regulators in South Korea, India, Australia, and the post-Brexit UK have started to launch investigations and levy fines in an effort to shift tech companies business practices. Now the US is joining the fray.

Spurred by a rapid shift in US public opinion, politicians on the left and rightfrom progressive Democratic senators like Elizabeth Warren to Trump-allied Republican representatives like Jim Jordanhave made taking on Big Tech a core piece of their political identities. Congress has begun the process of updating the nations antitrust laws for the first time in seven decades. President Joe Biden named Lina Khan, a firebrand antitrust scholar once at the fringe of US legal thought, as the head of the countrys top competition regulator; she has vowed to ramp up lawsuits against tech firms and dust off her agencys long-neglected power to set competition rules.

Federal prosecutors have joined forces with coalitions of state attorneys general to bring sweeping suits against the likes of Facebook and Google. Some of these cases explicitly call for tech giants to be broken upa legal feat that would only be possible in US courts, which have jurisdiction over the biggest tech companies.

All these efforts could, with time, reconfigure the landscape of corporate giants that control how the world shops, finds information, and accesses the internet. But, historically, the pace of antitrust proceedings has been glacially slow. US prosecutors landmark lawsuit against Microsoft, for instance, didnt fully wind down until a decade after it began in 2001. Today, any investigation, lawsuit, or enforcement action could take years to reach a resolution, as legions of high-paid economists and lawyers well-versed in stalling tactics debate the minutia of arcane market models and legal precedents.

Weve taken a snapshot of the wide world of antitrust in an attempt to put into perspective the slow-moving, global project of reining in big tech. This chart lists every major antitrust case against Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple that is still pending today.

Continue reading here:

A cheat sheet to all the antitrust cases against Big Tech in 2021 - Quartz

One of the most highly-valued startups in the world just announced a "major expansion of its presence into Canada," joining the likes of Google, Amazon, Netflix, Reddit, TikTok, DoorDash, Uber, Pinterest,Wayfair and dozens of other tech giants in opening a downtown Toronto office.

Stripe announced on Tuesday that it expects to sign a lease for office space in downtown Toronto sometime over the next few months, though a location has yet to be revealed.

The goal is totap into the city's vast pool of local engineering, product and sales talent, as well as to bring more services to its Canadian customers, of which there are many.

"Since Stripe first began operations in Canada in 2012, Canadian businesses have processed billions of dollars through the platform from industry leaders likeShopify,Lightspeed,Jobber, andClearcoto fast-growing SMBs likeCanadian BBQ Boys,Cabinscape, andSuper Soils," readsa release from the brand, which already boasts more than 4,000 employees across 11 global offices.

"Stripe is hiring for roles in engineering, product, and sales in Toronto. This team complements Stripe's increasingly distributed engineering workforce includingin Dublinand itsLondon fintech office."

While not as much of a household name as startups-turned-tech giantslike Uber or TikTok, Stripe is an incredibly fast-growing company withbacking from the likes of heavyweight venture capitalists including Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.

The platform, which has dual headquarters in San Francisco and Dublin, describes itself as a "technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet," effectively makespayment processing software for e-commerce.

It is currently used in over 120 countries by millions of companies including Amazon, Google, Slack, Microsoft, Uber, Lyft, Spotify, Nasdaq, Expedia and Zillow, according to Stripe's website.

Long story short, this companyis abig deal one that investors believe will only get bigger as time goes on. Anew Toronto officeis part of that growth story.

"I want to thank Stripe for choosing to locate its first Canadian office in Toronto and joining our city's thriving tech community," said the city's mayor, John Tory, in a news release on Tuesday.

"We have a tremendous success story in Toronto when it comes to our tech sector and now Stripe is a valued part of that ongoing success. We have worked hard throughout the pandemic to support people and businesses and make sure that our entire city comes back stronger than ever. Today's great news from Stripe is a further sign of confidence in Toronto's future."

Stripe is already hiring for some engineering roles in Toronto, but says itwill "continue to recruit for roles" as it expands its team locally and unveils more products for Canadian businesses.

In addition to announcing its forthcoming digs in downtown Toronto, Stripe also announced this morning that it had launched four new products in Canada including something called"Stripe Tax" andPre-Authorized Debits.

"Our government is thrilled that Stripe has chosen to expand into Ontario for its first Canadian office, and we want to congratulate them on this milestone," said Ontario's MinisterEconomic Development, Job Creation and Trade, Vic Fedeli, on Tuesday.

"Ontario is home to the world's most talented workforce, strong post-secondary institutions, the brightest entrepreneurs, and a vibrant innovation and tech ecosystem. We look forward to Stripe's collaboration with homegrown talent as they continue their growth in Ontario."

Continued here:

Another global tech giant is opening an office in Toronto and they're hiring - blogTO

Europe's Margrethe Vestager is familiar with handling the thorniest tech issues.

The US and Europe may soon be more in sync on tech issues, with the first meeting of the newly formed US-EU Trade & Technology Council due to take place Wednesday in Pittsburgh. In the run-up to the meeting, Margrethe Vestager, the European Competition Commissioner and vice president of the EU's digital project, expressed her hopes for the two powers to find alignment in areas including competition, AI and taxation.

Vestager, who spoke Tuesday at Vox's Code Conference in Los Angeles, has garnered a reputation for being tough on big tech. That's largely due to the hefty antitrust fines she's handed out to tech giants, in particular Googleand Amazon, as well as a major tax spat with Apple. Former US President Donald Trump viewed her as an enemy of both America and technology, but she professes to be a fan of both and sees a shared purpose with her current counterparts in the US.

Her "mission," she said Tuesday at the conference, is "to make sure that technology serves us, not only as consumers but also as citizens."

In many respects, Vestager's reputation has also been shaped by the fact Europe has pushed ahead of the US in terms of regulating big tech. The most prominent example of that is the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulationin 2018, which saw an overhaul of Europe's privacy laws to make them better fit the digital age. One of the law's hallmark features was meant to be steep fines for tech giants who misuse consumer data. The GDPR has been criticized for not resulting in enough large fines for big tech, as well as being the cause of the large number of privacy pop-ups in the browsers of European web users.

Vestager on Tuesday conceded that improvements were necessary in those regards, but she ultimately defended the legislation, pointing to the broader impact it's had on the global conversation around citizen's digital rights.

"The main success of GDPR is that now privacy is a thing," she said. "If we had not passed this kind of legislation, I think we would still be in the dark."

Vestager also noted that since first working with the US, she's observed a major shift in thinking on the part of lawmakers in the country about privacy. The US isn't alone in this, she added. "It's only a question of time before you see ... real alignments between democracies on this planet -- Europe, the US, India, Canada, Australia, Japan," Vestager said. "Everyone is now coming on board."

Seeking alignment with the US was a common thread running through Vestager's session at Code, as she expressed her hope of finding common ground with her peers in Washington, DC. It's no secret that Europe and the US struggled to work together during Trump's presidency. Tensions over taxation caused the US to implement tariffs on a number of major goods exported by Europe as individual countries sought to tax big American tech companies on a more regional basis.

From the lab to your inbox. Get the latest science stories from CNET every week.

"There has been a complete turnaround with the change of administration, when it comes to saying it's important that you pay your taxes," Vestager said. She added that she hopes that an international agreement is imminent, for corporate taxation and the distribution of taxing rights, "so that businesses pay taxes where they create their value."

Vestager also said she feels the US and EU are increasingly aligned on competition matters based on President Joe Biden's July executive order. Biden's plan for "Promoting Competition in the American Economy" ordered the Federal Trade Commission to bar unfair methods of competition on internet marketplaces. It also seeks torestore Obama-era net neutrality rulesand calls for greater scrutiny of mergers, singling out "dominant internet platforms."

"That kind of signaling is what is encouraging everyone who thinks that fair competition should be the rule in the marketplace," Vestager said.

One additional priority area for coordination with the US in Wednesday's meeting is artificial intelligence. Consumers are most familiar with AI in the form of Amazon's Alexa, Google's Assistant and Apple's Siri, but AI goes beyond smart assistants. It can be used to digitally impersonate real people in the form of deepfakes and to spread disinformation, but it's also expected to transform the way we live.

"In order for that enormous potential to be unleashed, we need to be able to trust it," Vestager said. This often hasn't been the case, due to the number of instances in which the technology has been shown to hold bias, she added. "We need to move forward in democracies to change that, because otherwise, artificial intelligence will be turned against us."

Originally posted here:

Europe's message to the US: To trust tech, regulate it - CNET

Google's represenative said 'scams and fraud are organised crime, much like identity theft or hacking.' Photo: AP

The UKs Treasury is grilling tech giants Google (GOOGL), eBay (EBAY), Facebook (FB), and Amazon (AMZN) on what they are doing to fight economic crime, prevent fraud, and protect consumers on their platforms

Treasury committee chair Mel Stride has written to the companies following an evidence hearing last month as part of an inquiry on economic crime.

There has been a huge rise in online crime and, as a committee, we want to gain a clearer understanding of what is needed to ensure tech platforms are safe spaces for people to operate and not fall victim to scams or fraud, he said.

Notwithstanding the efforts already being made by tech platforms such as Google, eBay, Facebook and Amazon, I am keen that they spell out in more detail what they are doing to protect their users from online fraud and advertising scams, and how they are tackling issues such as the online promotion of tax avoidance schemes.

The committee wants to know details about the firms' online fraud steering group and meetings with government departments about economic crime. It also wants to know how the companies are compensating their customers who have been victims of financial fraud.

It has asked all companies what policy they have regarding the promotion of tax avoidance and evasion on their platform.

Some of the questions relate to the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The committee has asked each company how much the FCA paid them in the the last three years to warn their users about unauthorised advertisements, and if any other public sector bodies paid them for financial crime-related advertising.

Stride's letters have asked for a response by 18 October.

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In last month's hearing, Amanda Storey, director, trust and safety at Google, said "scams and fraud are organised crime, much like identity theft or hacking."

She said the company is "evolving our policies over many years to tackle financial services issues in terms of our advertising."

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"Any advertiser wanting to target a UK user with a financial services ad has to be FCA authorised and has to pass identity checks before it can run that ad."

At the same hearing, Gaon Hart, head of public policy, customer trust, UK at Amazon told the committee Amazon has "three broad types of scams."

"You are talking about the customer support scams that we see, where someone pretends to be from Amazon or from another organisation, and sits there and tries to get access to somebodys details."

He said there are also recruitment scams and retail fraud,"which is fraud on the site by either sellers or buyers either not sending the goods or, alternatively, not paying for the goods, essentially."

Earlier this year the UK introduced a Digital Markets Unit to enforce a new code to govern the behaviour of tech giants that currently dominate the market.

The unit became operational in April, but it will only gain the powers it needs if MPs vote to grant them, and that could take as long as 2022.

Back in May a coalition of organisations urged the UK government to use the Online Safety Bill to protect people from an avalanche of online scams.

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Tech firms asked to clarify fraud and scam prevention controls - Yahoo News